David Allan is Reader in History at the University of St Andrews. His other books include Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment: Ideas of Scholarship in Early Modern History (1993), Philosophy and Politics in Later Stuart Scotland: Neo-Stoicism, Culture and Ideology in an Age of Crisis, 1540-1690 (2000), Scotland in the Eighteenth Century: Union and Enlightenment (2002), Adam Ferguson (2006) and A Nation of Readers: The Lending Library in Georgian England (2008).

'He [Allan] must be applauded for further redirecting our focus on the consumers and institutions of Enlightenment culture and, above all else, for the magisterial scale of his archival excavations, which incorporates no fewer than fifty local repositories in addition to over a dozen major research libraries.' –Journal of Modern History'As a repository of unique archival evidence regarding English readers' consumption of Scottish Enlightenment texts, Allan's book is uniquely valuable'. – Project Muse

• AbbreviationsAcknowledgmentsPART I: PROBLEMS Chapter 1: A Question of Perspective: Scotland and England in the British EnlightenmentPART II: CONTEXTSChapter 2: "The Self-Impannelled Jury of the English Court of Criticism": Taste and the Making of the CanonChapter 3: "For Learning and For Arms Renown’d": Scotland in the Public MindChapter 4: "An Ample Fund of Amusement and Improvement": Institutional Frameworks for Reading and ReceptionChapter 5: Readers and Their Books: Why, Where and How Did Reading Happen?PART III: CONTINGENCIESChapter 6: "One Longs to Say Something": English Readers, Scottish Authors and the Contested TextChapter 7: "Many Sketches & Scraps of Sentiments": Commonplacing and the Art of ReadingChapter 8: Copying and Co-opting: Owning the TextPART IV: CONSTRUCTIONSChapter 9: Reading and Meaning: History, Travel and Political EconomyChapter 10: Mis-reading and Misunderstanding: Encountering Natural Religion and HumePART V: CONSEQUENCESChapter 11: The Making of British Culture: Reading Identities in the Social History ofIdeasNotesBibliographyIndex